


collection

by RaspberryDawn



Category: Smosh
Genre: Alternate Universe, Cheating, Domestic, Drabble Collection, Drowning, Established Relationship, Heavy Angst, M/M, One Shot Collection, References to Depression, Sex, Suicide, Tags change each chapter
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-05
Updated: 2017-05-12
Packaged: 2018-10-15 00:26:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,755
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10546904
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RaspberryDawn/pseuds/RaspberryDawn
Summary: A shayne/noah collection. Because of course it is. One-shots that are not connected unless otherwise mentioned.1: Wouldn't It Be NiceNoah is a night owl. Shayne is not. Shayne likes to show off his morning person dominance by singing in the shower. Noah is tired in general.2: Timeline of a GhostIn an AU loosely based off 'The Discovery', when it's proven there is life after death, Shayne tries to piece together why Noah chose this route - and what may have happened.3: ChapelA private talk shared between two lovers in a church, prior to a wedding. Just seems a shame only one of them is to be wed, and the discussion is the ramifications of their past and present affair.





	1. Wouldn't It Be Nice

**Author's Note:**

> I very highly suggest you read the lyrics of 'Wouldn't It Be Nice' by The Beach Boys before reading. not a song fic, no, just, references that a lot due to plot. Not so much it's unreadable, but more enjoyable if you do, for sure.
> 
> _It was clear as day (that hadn't even broke yet) that Noah could hear the blond stepping into the tub. The small thud of his feet in porcelain, the tiny squeak of the faucet turning to hot. Yet, it was the fucking music that Noah couldn't live with._
> 
> _Shayne wasn't the best of singers, and he knew that, so he rarely even tried in a serious fashion to sing... but in the shower, that glorious place, all bets were off. That was fine, that was how the world long worked in treaty between humans and showers. It was the fucking time of the morning that it currently was that did him in._

Noah was trying to hold both his own two pillows along with Shayne's pillow over his head so he didn't have to hear. He didn't even have to look at the alarm clock near the bed or grab his phone by the bedside to be able to tell it was way too fucking early in the morning for this. After all, it was still completely dark outside. That was all the evidence he needed.

There was a playlist Shayne listened to every morning in the bathroom, and it surely sounded like he didn't realize sound could travel through a closed door. At least he was kind enough to wait until the shower portion of his morning routine to turn it on, right? No, every noise Noah heard just grated in his head today. The back of his eyes was where he felt the goddamn tension. The sound of coffee brewing felt like a drill boring into his brain. 

He couldn't have been asleep that long. His body ached from not having rested long, leaving the evidence of a lack of sleep in the fact he just sort of felt heavy.

It was clear as day (that hadn't even broke yet) that Noah could hear the blond stepping into the tub. The small thud of his feet in porcelain, the tiny squeak of the faucet turning to hot. Yet, it was the fucking music that Noah couldn't live with.

Shayne wasn't the best of singers, and he knew that, so he rarely even tried in a serious fashion to sing... but in the shower, that glorious place, all bets were off. That was fine, that was how the world long worked in treaty between humans and showers. It was the fucking time of the morning that it currently was that did him in.

Soon enough it wafted through the non-sound proof door.

“Wouldn't it be nice if we were older, and we wouldn't have to wait so long...”

Noah tried to sink into the mattress. He tried to just go entirely limp, to maybe hope he could will himself into a coma. The song was only two minutes long, two and a half maybe, but it was the first of a few. It was just incredibly sickeningly peppy for the time of day.

Shayne would sing all of it, too. Because he hated Noah. He had asked Noah to move in just so this could happen every day for the past two weeks, because Noah must have wronged him in the past, or maybe even in a past life, and he hated Noah.

His eyes felt pained when he opened them. He pulled the pillows away from his face, untangling himself from a sheet and blanket.

He looked especially scrawny in an overly large shirt and boxer briefs that peeked out under them, but he also looked very upset. He was hoping to use this to his advantage. 

Or maybe not.

He didn't really care, at this point.

“You know it's gonna make it that much better--”

Noah grabbed the phone from the sink and turned off the music. He could tell Shayne really suddenly shifted, pausing with his hands still shampooing his blond hair.

Needless to say, the singing stopped, before Noah even pulled back the curtain and stared him down.

“No, no, it wouldn't be nice. Do you know what would actually be nice? What would actually make things better? If you just stopped. If you could just... stop.”

There was understandable confusion in those blue eyes, but Noah continued on his intended barrage. 

“You know, how does it go again? It'll be better, when we can say good night, stay together, if we could wake up in the morning when the day is through and spend it together – whatever? Whatever. We do live together. It'd be great, just great, if we could actually wake up together in the morning. I don't know if that will happen, though! Right now it's... it's...”

He fumbled to grab Shayne's phone again to catch the time. Without his glasses on, he had to pull the phone fairly close to his face to see. 

“...it's five. It's five twenty-three in the morning and this is not normal. How the fuck do you just wake up like this? You just wake up. If you set an alarm, I don't hear it. How? I hear it though when you scoop coffee out of the can. So why can't I hear an alarm? What human being just wakes up at five in the morning? You got what, you go to bed at like, eleven? Twelve, if you're wild? You don't seem like you ever nap, like, damn, what on earth?”

The harshness of the bright screen agitated his eyes even worse, and he just set it back down.

“I've heard this song... more than fourteen times. More than once a day. It's from what, the fifties or sixties or something? What normal person your age even listens to this like, as their go-to morning thing? I wish every kiss with you was never-ending, so you wouldn't have to wake up at five and sing this song in the shower.”

He reached in the shower, grabbing a bit blindly for the faucet, but he quickly found it and turned it off. Shayne stood there unimpressed, kind of just taking everything in, his hair in disarray as he covered his arms over his chest. 

“If I wish, and I hope, and pray, would it come true that you would just stop? I shouldn't even know half these lyrics! Or any of them. This is torture. This is actual torture condemned by the United Nations and you're committing this against me, a protected minority.”

Shayne touched his own face, his palm under his chin as he scratched the top of his jaw awkwardly. 

“It really makes it worse to live with it. Have you ever heard of the Geneva Convention?”

“Uh. Well... You're kinda harshing my morning.”

The blond replied softly, yet with an authoritative tone.

Noah covered both of his eyes with his palms.

“Was that last bit about you being Jewish and the Geneva Convention really necessary?”

“Probably not.”

He immediately retorted, running his hands down his own face to claw at it. The theatrics themselves were also a bit over the top, but he couldn't stop now.

“The song is actually from the late sixties.”

“So it's only fifty years old or so. That's great. Cool. Can you still maybe not at five in the morning.”

“I'm about to head to the gym, though...”

“Sing in the shower at the gym.”

“I'm going to uh, politely decline.”

“Use your waterproof earbuds.”

“I... don't think they're that waterproof.”

“Take a bath, then.”

“...Anyway, I'm getting a bit cold.”

“Please be quieter...”

“I love you.”

Shayne leaned over and gave him a quick kiss, while Noah reached to turn the water that had by now cooled down back on. As Shayne quiet but forcefully let out 'son of a bitch', Noah started to walk away.

“I love you too.”


	2. Timeline of a Ghost

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Even in Shayne’s life, just a statistic. Sure, millions of people he knew personally hadn’t died, but enough had. It had been around four hundred days since people kept killing themselves, with the knowledge out now in the world that you went somewhere else after death._
> 
> _There was an afterlife and Shayne was still here on earth, thinking about how four minutes ago he had pressed his fingers against Noah’s neck. He had tried to feel for a pulse, for anything alive on this plane of existence._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Loosely based on the movie 'The Discovery', available on Netflix. A one-shot exploring from a limited perspective by Shayne's view on the impact of the realization of an afterlife being a reality. Especially when this changes the views on suicide.
> 
> Needless to say, deals with suicide, depression, some graphic scenes, some sexual content... stuff.
> 
> And also, needless to say: suicide is an epidemic that has caimed millions. Depression as well - if you need help, please seek it.

He was beautiful, and his lips were blue.

There wasn’t any sort of attachment to that – no ifs or buts. His face was still flush with the cold water of the sea, though it was devoid of all color or life. With his glasses gone, his brown hair tussled over his forehead, his clothes soaked down to his bones, he was beautiful.

That didn’t stop Shayne’s attention from being on his own hands. He could only stare at himself, the sound of the water reaching up and lapping at Noah’s ankles still taking over his mind. The wind wasn’t that rough out, but it was just enough to bring a cold breeze. If he looked at Noah, if he looked at the body, he was worried he would all too familiarly recall feeling what he had just done moments ago. 

Dragging someone he loved out of a lake was not something he ever had wanted to do, but these days a lot of people just kept dying. He’d tried to stop it, though.

When he had beat his palms against Noah’s chest, he didn’t really know what he was doing, but he had tried to stop him from dying. Even just by grabbing him, tearing the heavy backpack off of him, it was evidence he had been trying in vain.

His hands still hurt.

They had so many discussions about this. They almost had too many conversations about dying. There was some quote floating around in Shayne’s mind, one that the tall brunet had told him, about one death being a tragedy yet millions of deaths were a statistic. It had seemed legitimate at the time. Noah couldn’t remember when he told Shayne if those were the right words, or who had said it, or if maybe he had just made it all up. 

This was just a statistic, then.

Even in Shayne’s life, just a statistic. Sure, millions of people he knew personally hadn’t died, but enough had. It had been around four hundred days since people kept killing themselves, with the knowledge out now in the world that you went somewhere else after death.

There was an afterlife and Shayne was still here on earth, thinking about how four minutes ago he had pressed his fingers against Noah’s neck. He had tried to feel for a pulse, for anything alive on this plane of existence.

Now that there was nothing left here, there was nothing left to do but stare at the grey sand and hunch over the remains.

\- - - -

It was late into September, four months prior, and Noah had his body pressed against the windowpane. There was rain hitting against it, and it was mildly entertaining to watch which rain drop would fall the quickest.

“You probably look like you’re in a sad music video.”

Shayne commented, curled up in bed with a book on his lap and a cat next to him. There was a definite heavy air of melancholy going around.

“Nobody’s outside.”

Everything had a hint of bitterness when spoken. The implication behind the statement was ‘remember, a year ago, when this wouldn’t be the case? There would be people everywhere?’ and Shayne was supposed to feel sad and think of the tens of millions of suicides.

Not that many people even called it suicide anymore. Some fringe groups, some with religious connection, they preferred to call it ‘relocating’, ‘crossing over’, a veritable group of terms that sounded like they would have been from a cult in the early 1990s. These wordings were commonplace these days, nothing to be sneered at.

After all, it seemed even those that held moral objections could be rather morbidly curious.

“Isn’t the window cold at least?”

“Very.”

“Stop being a weird freak pressing your shirtless body against the glass. Come back to bed.”

It was ten in the morning and they had both been up for two hours, at least, with nothing to do. Noah had taken to bringing them both a coffee to bed, and then had taken up his true calling of being rather weird at times.

Noah did as suggested though, coming back to him, always following like an obedient puppy in those days. Part of why they had gotten together was that after the big announcement, Shayne had provided a solid foundation to stick to. They hadn’t even known one another for that long before then.

“I still can’t believe they canceled your school for the semester.”

“They have some stuff to figure out.”

Shayne replied nonchalantly. The world hadn’t stopped moving or anything in the meantime, and it wasn’t as if society returned to a time where only those who didn’t pursue purely intellectual things were valued… After all, ‘common laborers’ were often just as excited at the prospect of something beyond too. In fact, even most religious groups had embraced it. It fit into a new chapter of all these things, the bible, Koran, torah.

A non-practicing half-Jew and an agnostic couldn’t care that much what the religious aspects were, though.

“Did I tell you what I learned the other day?”

Noah was crawling back on the bed, peeling the blankets away from Shayne’s body. His thin fingers massaged Shayne’s legs, and the blond set aside the book he had been reading. Often, the kid would come up with some kind of interesting facts or whatever, he always did.

“What is it this time?”

“A long time ago, like, a century back, they found out how much a soul weighs.”

He pressed the subject forward, even though he could see a bit of discomfort on his lover’s face.

“Like, less than an ounce, it just leaves your body when you die. With the whole subatomic particle thing of… whatever that team did, they say they captured things leaving the body, it makes sense a bit, right?”

He placed his large hand against Noah’s face, covering his birthmarks, sliding his thumb around Noah’s bottom lip.

“I don’t think subatomic particles… well, yeah. They’d have to weigh under an ounce, right?”

“It was like, twenty grams. Twenty one, I think. It leaves your body, so that’s the weight of your soul.”

Shayne slipped his thumb in Noah’s mouth, the lithe twenty-year old accepting this and sucking on the digit. By then, Shayne had taught himself to not think anything of it. Noah had become preoccupied with death, just as everyone else had. When he was stared up at, he just felt a tinge of power that he knew he wouldn’t feel if he were dead.

Not that there really was a general census of what you still felt, if anything, when dead.

Noah was trying to go along with the general seduction, making himself as appealing as he could. One hand gently squeezed Shayne’s thigh at that moment, not actually realizing that this was the kind of distraction Shayne wanted to try to use. The blond didn’t really want to think about these things, so he would seduce Noah away from them. There was no way to really tell at the time that it was causing some twisted association with death and sex.

That description alone would have been the wet dream of most old-time philosophical intellectualists.

If he had to think back, that must have been the first time. Taking refuge from having to go into the cold rain outside, they had stayed in bed and had sex after that. It wasn’t that they ‘made love’, it was not particularly romantic. Noah had placed Shayne’s hands upon his neck, and held them tight, until he had laughed and asked if the teen was into that type of thing.

Shayne never really got an answer, but from then on, too often, their sex would include a hand around the neck. If he made a v-shape with his thumb and forefinger, he could press down on both sides at once and could deny he was angry at Noah just because he also happened to be cutting his air supply off. 

Noah would turn red, bright red, and rarely he would try to struggle and kick until he was free. With gasping breath, he would always question why Shayne had actually stopped.

\- - - -

At the very beginning, they were told it would be a groundbreaking discovery. That it would be akin to Elon Musk stating that we all actually were in a simulation that was so perfected, no one could tell the difference between reality and virtual reality anymore. 

He had stayed away from the news that night, not out of purposeful avoidance, but he had grown weary of hearing how every announcement would change his life. 

So before he heard the news, he had heard of the consequences of it.

It hadn’t been apparent upon waking that everyone was in pandemonium outside. It was no apocalyptic scene with smoke billowing on the horizon. When he checked the news it was at a glance just as if the world’s countries had gotten a little crazier maybe.

He went along that day a bit uneasy, but no extraordinarily different feelings. When he picked up his date Noah for lunch, the kid was pale and almost mute. It was obvious he wanted to talk about something, but didn’t know how to start.

Noah seemed fairly prone to being swept away into social causes anyway, but when Shayne tried to get him to talk it was met with resistance rather than the regular flurry of discussion.

‘You have to watch it for yourself.’

That wasn’t quite the right way to get Shayne interested in something, but Noah also didn’t seem like he was trying to be mysterious just for the sake of it. He seemed genuinely shaken.

It didn’t help that after a mostly quiet lunch, on the way back to Shayne’s place they saw someone drive their car straight into a concrete barrier.

It did quite a bit of damage to the small four door ca. They both had exclaimed upon seeing it, though shortly they had stopped, it only got worse. A man exited the vehicle, disoriented seeming and bleeding, but while both young men had been ready to jump out of the car to help the stranger produced something from his pocket.

The situation quickly spiraled into Shayne realizing his alignment of morals would be at a point where he would ram this stranger with his car for swinging around a gun on the busy road. He could just slink down in his seat and hit the gas pedal.

They weren’t but maybe nine feet away, at a stop in the middle of the road, when the man turned the gun on himself. Just like that, in an instant, the body crumpled to the pavement. The brunet was hyperventilating and very, very expressive - hands over his eyes, rocking forward, muttering and on the brink of tears it sounded like. While that was an understandable reaction, Shayne was quiet as a ghost. 

Especially when he saw in the car, there were bodies flung forward. He didn’t know how many were inside but he was absolutely sure there was so much blood no one was alive. It didn’t take a doctor to be able to tell that. The sound of sirens blazed in the distance, all ending in them getting back to Shayne’s place much later than they had anticipated.

He had told Noah repeatedly that he could have just taken him home, but the brunet simultaneously wanted to be alone yet didn’t. It didn’t end up with that being the only suicide either of them saw, but it was significant as the first.

They had huddled together on the couch, and by the time Shayne turned on the television due to his beckoning it seemed a lot of others around the world had been experiencing this trauma and confusion.

A life after death was promised as being a guarantee. This was being toted as proven fact. Moreover, there was science to back up the theory. There was neuroscience and complicated things that all just led to one final thing: a sound bite that declared ‘you heard that correctly folks…’.

It was a confusing time.

Some people early on took the revelation as the thing that would save them. It could absolve them of any burdens, and the proof they needed didn’t even have to be stringent. It wasn’t just for the clinically depressed and already suicidal, either. It was a chance to opt out of a program one never agreed to be in.

As bits of time passed, no one seemed able to argue against it from a scientific standpoint. It was always about the morality, which varied wildly by person. 

It seemed as if Noah and Shayne had similar feelings about it all, so they definitely after that found themselves in a deeper relationship than what they had been. It had thrust them both into talking about things usually reserved much later for relationships, after all.

If a soul had a weight then theirs would be leaving eventually with less than 21 grams. Every single day they were faced with unbelievable pressure in their attempt to stay sane with everyone else that was still left.

It wasn’t as if they waxed poetic to one another about how they never thought of death. It wasn’t just an elephant in the corner of the room they ignored.

Noah mentioned how a friend when he was in highschool had killed herself. Shayne delved deep to admit he heard that’s how his grandfather went, although it was before he was born and no one ever really talked about it.

There was an epidemic that was spreading before this one, was the gist they got out of their many talks. Now it was sanctioned suicide. There was legislature to allow euthanasia to push through, especially in America. There were swift punishments for those in Russia accused of spreading suicidal propaganda. As time went on, nobody at all could stay silent. Religious leaders weighed in early on, and some even recanted later to be vaguely accepting in order to bury bodies with ceremony.

They found themselves having a few fights here and there, whether about morality or education or anything applicable. The one time they really passionately fought was during a difference in opinion over exactly who should be able to ‘access’ death, not because of the aforementioned legislations on euthanasia but because of prison systems.

After that, there was an argument about whether the public should have been told. ‘We had a right,’ Noah pounded a fist on a table, while Shayne grabbed his wrist. ‘Some people can’t face the truth already when it’s right in their face, whatever that truth is. People need protected.’ 

There were people still trying to protect themselves after. A resurgence of art happened, from music to painting to acting. People switched careers mid-life even in staggering numbers, they became so unafraid of failure. The tone of funerals changed to be accepting of what was truly an actual ‘passing’ now.

Six months before he died, Noah brought them home a dog. It didn’t get along with Shayne’s cat very well. Noah laid out a passionate argument about the creature he had found wandering the streets to allow it to stay. Taking care of the animal became his life, something that was not in and of itself a warning sign in the least. 

Shayne wrote poem he kept in a loose leaf binder, about the world and how he felt relationships changed, and Noah was busy making paintings he promised were of the dog but seemed to be smears of unconnected paint.

It was an unavoidable topic but sure enough they began to ignore it. Noah started that off, finding it useless to mention the latest person who had passed that he knew. Neither of them had many friends anymore anyway, even with the brunet having had a large circle of people he knew and the short blond being an extroverted popular kid even in the workforce.

It just got to where Noah didn’t want to hear it anymore.

A month after discussing the weight of souls, the dog passed away. Shayne hadn’t grown attached to it, but he was attached to the person it was bothering the most. It was only two weeks later, the first time Noah mumbled his thoughts.

“I think I’m depressed.” 

That was all that started it, and Shayne didn’t know what to do with that information. He offered to listen any time that Noah needed it, but Noah became a bit of a recluse.

They ended up moving near the beach, which is when Noah started expressing his desire of how he wanted to die.

“Tons of cultures talk about how fire is so cleansing, like, it’s the ultimate form of starting over. I heard the other day of someone drowning in a lake - by accident, how awful, right? But that lake has been known to attract people now who load themselves up with rocks. They drown, and it’s supposed to be peaceful. The water is clear, you’re surrounded by the alps. It’s in Austria, Switzerland? Somewhere… but I think maybe their family just says it was an accident. Nobody walks in a lake with a pack full of rocks tied to them on purpose.”

Shayne had been on the computer playing a videogame when Noah had come out of nowhere with his spiel. He tried to stay alive in the game, only half-heartedly listening. Philosophical discussions about life and death were so overdone, but his Aquarius boyfriend would hear nothing about stopping.

“What gets me is that if fire is so cleansing, maybe water is like, a maelstrom of stewing around forever. Like the sea of souls Hades had, or whatever?” 

“You’d be talking about human soup. That’s kinda… I just ate not too long ago, you know?” 

“Metaphorically. Flames and fire make everything wisp away. But there’s different types of water! There’s different bodies of water. What about an endless ocean? Just drifting.” 

If only it wasn’t rude, he could have turned his volume up and kept playing. He wasn’t about to be so blatantly disrespectful.

“It’s not easy to drown, is it? You’d have to be weighted, still.” 

“It could definitely push and shove your body around, with time.” 

Noah had wrapped his arms around Shayne, leaning down, resting his chin all the way down on his shoulder. Shayne gave an awkward, crooked smile, not to his boyfriend but to the computer screen and the character he was letting die because he couldn’t get out of this.

“When there’s life after death, I don’t think that means you’re actually dying.” 

The comment made his boyfriend shift, cradling his face against Shayne’s neck.

“I’ll be immortal then. I haven’t died yet, and therefore I must be immortal.” 

“That’s… a lot of false bravado. A ton of it. Where did you get something like that?”

‘Well, the world has gone to shit.”

That was the statement that pulled him back from the moment and had him agree. 

He somehow didn’t see the downward spiral his lover was on, or if he had, he willingly pushed away thinking about it. 

There was the time much closer to his upcoming death that Noah came home, frantic, his chest heaving with each breath, and the next thing Shayne heard was the sound of him trying to dislodge the mirror in the bathroom off it’s hinges. When he made it to try and stop him, he passed by the mirror in their bedroom that had already been taken down and turned against the wall.

It was quite a sight to see the brunet try this, because while he wasn’t weak he certainly wasn’t strong enough to do what he was attempting. Instead, he easily pulled the slender kid away. He was pale, shaky, lungs obviously heaving, but there was an absence in his eyes of emotion - despite his pupils being so dilated.

The only thing that could console him was when Shayne took the mirror down, because he didn’t want the other to hurt himself by attempting the same thing again. (He had indeed promised he would try again, and again, even if he had to smash the mirror.) He was empty, rocking back and forth as Shayne worked, barely stopping when the blond tried to console him.

Over breakfast the day after, he knew he was expected to explain the incident, and so he did. He’d seen a ghost, he offhandedly commented, and he laughed, so he would make his boyfriend laugh. The color was still drained from him, and Shayne had not wanted to laugh in agreement, but it was fairly fresh after the death of his sister following a surgical procedure and so the thought that no afterlife existed was now too terrifying.

The night before he died, Noah broached the topic.

They were already in bed, laying apart from one another, in the darkness but lit up by two dimmed screens. Even the television was on, but turned down so softly that hearing it would have been quite the task to undertake. They needed the constant pulse of something alive around them.

“I think, when you die, it doesn’t even matter where you go. I think that place, it’s just as similar to here as it can be. It may as well be the same thing as being alive.”

“But here, you’re here with me.”

That was his entire argument against it.

“I think you’re there already. I think I must be there, already, too. I think it’s not so much a place. This whole time, I thought maybe it was. If death is the ‘great equalizer’ though, it must not be so equal anymore. Maybe it’s just another chance at life. We’re not already dead, but we’re always stuck in the same state.”

If anything, he thought to himself, this had become his personal hell in a way. A prison populated by him alone.

Noah grabbed his shoulder, leaned in close.

“Do you love me, still?”

It jolted him, and he pulled away a little. He turned on his side, shut his phone off, and curled into himself. He was beginning to turn a bit more than just a little resentful at Noah’s antics.

“Sure. I do.”

The grip tightened. Uncertainty from the person who was so certain about having figured out everything else.

He didn’t say anything else. Shayne succumbed to sleep much sooner before Noah did, because Noah tried to think if it would bother Shayne if his workout backpack disappeared with him - considering it had been quite some time since the other last used it.

\- - - -

It was their last conversation, and Shayne only realized that when he was packing up their home to move elsewhere. The sea held too much bitterness for him to look at. He could try to examine every little thing, and he often did, but he wouldn’t know the reason behind anything that happened.

When he went to pack up their dresser, he realized the mirror had been flipped the whole time. For a moment he felt unfounded fear, worried that if he looked at it now he too would see a ghost.

In a moment of bravery he grabbed it by the edges of the frame, only to pull away sharply when his hand felt an equally sharp pain. There was blood rushing out of it, down the floor, and he pulled it to himself and pressed his shirt in the cut to apply pressure.

The blood was like proof, a final seal that he was alive and still here.

How unfortunate, he thought to himself - but that was just the life he chose to live in.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I started wondering about what if this was Noah's point of view, but, there's a strange idea of an unreliable narrator here instead that I love... well, maybe not unreliable, but he's just as confused as all this philosophical babble.


	3. Chapel

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _He would have made out with him in this very room, he would have met him tomorrow for lunch just to find a secluded place to park his car and break any promise of fidelity not even twenty-four hours after his vows._
> 
> _For wanting to settle down, he sure still wanted to have the best of both relationships. Not that there wasn’t real love involved… just that the love he was offering both parties was by no means fair._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I dunno where this came from.  
> again if you'd like, feel free to suggest stuff.
> 
> PG-13  
> tags: wedding, cheating/affair

The room was much fancier than Noah had ever been in his life.

It was a small room tucked away in a Catholic church, not very large at all, but this day didn’t belong to the occupants of said room. The muted colors of beige fabrics on furniture with some vibrant reds and scuffed gold color trims made it obvious this was a church of status. There was a singular cross on the wall near a small mirror, and there were only two chairs. A small bookshelf was tucked near a small stained glass window - a window that kept catching his eyes with the way the sun glimmered in through it.

The sun, in fact, bounced through the window to dance it’s colors against Shayne’s neck and shoulder. It was hypnotizing.

Everything about Shayne was hypnotizing, however. He truly felt this. He had been around the rest of this cathedral, this monument of what felt like money first and religion second, yet none of the precious metals or ornate displays of grand excess could compare to the way he viewed Shayne.

His three piece suit was well-fitting and expensive looking. It was a dark gray, vest underneath, a white shirt further underneath that. For once in his life, he had modest shoes on, ones that didn’t have the sole purpose of hiding his true heigh. His hands kept fidgeting with the gray-blue silk tie around his neck; it was obvious from one end of the building to the other that the tie was to compliment his eyes. 

How nice, Noah thought, that the blond had let one thing about himself be considered.

While his own face was wracked with a nervous look, he was amazed the same wasn’t true for Shayne. He had no way of telling that the other man felt twisted knots in his stomach - he hid it well. The word nauseous would be the last thing he would admit even.

Turning to face Noah rather than continue staring in the mirror, he noticed the forced smile the brunette immediately placed upon his lips. It stretched his mouth thin and did not meet any emotions in his eyes. A rather pained look, really.

It was a bit strange to look at one another, with the near identical uniform of the day. Noah was lacking a blazer, but the purpose of Shayne having one was to hold a pocket square and a cornflower pinned to his chest.

How ironic it felt that cornflowers, the main choice of the event, were often called bachelor’s buttons in folklore around the world. Someone had picked out a cornflower bouquet despite this, with bright sunflowers, yellow buttons, and even a few elegant calla lilies interspersed professionally and perfectly.

Noah hadn’t seen the bouquet in person, not yet, only a picture. After all he was with the groomsmen, not the bridesmaids. 

This fact was what made his heart race so hard when Shayne stepped closer to him. There were hands on his face, cupping the bottom half, and the shorter man pulled him in a chaste kiss.

The way these hands held him, it made him want to melt away. He had to return the kiss, he absolutely had to, and besides - he had to lean down a bit in the first place.

His hands found their way to Shayne’s chest, mindful of not destroying the cornflower, and he couldn’t help but dig his fingers in a bit.

It was audible that his breath hitched when he tilted his head and kissed Shayne harder. The fact he knew that it was the last thing he should be doing made his face flush, and as he closed his eyes he sincerely hoped he wouldn’t cry. He didn’t know if crying would bother his contacts after all.

He just had to let go, so he could slide his arms behind Shayne to grip his shoulder blades. With his eyes closed, he was ready to fall apart. Fingers grazed his hair, and but it was too soon that the older man was pulling his hands back away.

In fact, he was pulling his entire body away from Noah.

On the rather young side of twenty and here he was going to cry, in a church of all places. Despite his Jewish origin he could care less where they were, because he could have avoided this scene and event altogether. When the other had pulled their lips apart, he was left with hunched shoulders and a bowed head.

If he looked, he knew it wouldn’t bode well for either of them.

“You’re still the person I love.”

How he could say it with such a steady voice of confidence was a bona fide mystery. They both felt as if they should just continue their kiss, that it should lead them to Shayne sitting on the chair as Noah straddled his lap. They would kiss and start to shed clothes, desperate for a final seal on their love, but both knew the end was nigh to where if they even undertook such an endeavor they would be caught.

“You say that you understand, but I worry, I’m so worried you’ll feel like you never meant anything to me.” 

There was a tone of pleading to his voice, one that made Noah cover his own face with his hands. 

Before his eyes was flashing the first time they kissed - Shayne had initiated it. They had both been intoxicated, but the true test was the blond didn’t reject or deny anything the next morning. They kept doing things together as they always had, and it increased with frequency the first time they meant to stay the night together.

Noah had uttered he loved Shayne, yes, during the act of expressing that love physically, but the returned feelings only increased the passion.

“Shayne…”

“You knew I was getting married. From the start, this was already going to happen.” 

“You could have changed your mind.”

He didn’t want to raise his voice here, and even if he had wanted to, he felt too emotionally vulnerable to express his anger readily. Anger was maybe just the emotion that tied things together after all, because it felt like he was stuck in a cycle of most every emotion at once whirling inside him.

“I love you, I still want you, it’s that she and I have planned out our whole lives. We were dating when you and I first met, years ago. We both knew this was happening.” 

There was no way he wanted to speak up to admit to loving his soon-to-be wife as well, feeling it was an unspoken and established understanding. Shayne’s heart was torn in two, from loving both people, and it was only a small bit ripped from heartbreak.

They had talked about their future for years, they had plans. What Noah offered him was pure and unfiltered love, true, but he was young and still experimenting with finding his place in the world. Shayne was ready to settle in with reality, to settle down.

In an alternative universe he had left his fiancee and had laid everything on the line instead to propose to the younger man. Who knows how it would have gone, because instead, he was in the universe where he had chosen to sleep with another man and whisper him sweet everythings while still being welcomed home with kisses and waking up mostly to her beside him.

“I don’t want to keep seeing you. I don’t want to see a married man. I don’t - I don’t even want to be in your life.” 

He was spewing words from the depths of his heart. Shayne listened, the least he could do, frozen in place.

“Because this is like you’re saying you need the sure thing, the normal thing. If I keep seeing you, things will continue for you. You’ll buy a car together, get a house with a mortgage, go together to the hardware store to find paint for the nursery when she’s pregnant and sit down together, thinking of names, and when she has the kid, you’ll be the best damn father, you’ll give the world to that kid, because you’ll be able to hold the world in your hands whenever you hold that baby. That baby will be your world.” 

He was barely taking breaths as he spoke, everything tumbling out. It was off the cuff, and he couldn’t stop.

“He’ll start school and you’ll get so emotional! She’ll get ready to go back to work, but then - you need to use the nursery again, and you’ll both be so happy. I’m not necessary for any of that, I won’t be responsible for any of your happiness. The problem is how I want to be!” 

The last sentence was louder, but it kept within the realms of quiet enough to not attract outside attention.

“But me, I’m stupid, I’m not ready for any of that, I want to get out there still, I want the experiences of the world, and if I forced myself to change we’d both hate each other. We would end up destroying everything you had, and I’d be scott free, but if I was ready, one day, I already know if we adopted, that wall in the nursery wouldn’t end up some boring neutral color - we’d figure out paintings in a mural, it would be bright and vibrant.” 

His lower lip quivered, before he just left his mouth agape slightly. He had no idea what had possessed him to think he could handle this situation, because, as evident now, it wasn’t possible.

He squeezed his palms together, despite the fact Shayne was now reaching out to him. The blond was able to pull away the hands just in time to see tears pool and thusly fall from his closed eyes.

Noah’s face was uncharacteristically flushed red, the look on his face one of utter defeat.

It only hastened the sick feeling that Shayne felt in the pit of his stomach. He thought of the people already in the chapel, the bride already in her dress and being fawned over by family and friends, and how he would look at her with love when he saw, probably as if it were the first time seeing her again.

“I’ve never loved someone like this. I’ve never loved someone before you, Shayne. I never even came close to thinking I did, but I do love you.” 

He looked down and locked gazes with the other, feeling an awful headache coming on with the frequency tears were now streaming. The silence from the other party didn’t sit with him well.

“We could leave. We could just go, but I don’t even know what I have to offer you. I don’t know what I can give you. But you have everything figured out! You had everything figured out, right, up until this moment?” 

Shayne had to look away. The result of guilty actions flooded his features, and he exhaled out of his nose. Even with his face turned a bit away, even without looking, he could easily reach up and hold Noah’s face again - for the first time, he felt a slight recoil when he did.

“This was the plan. The only part of the plan that wasn’t was you, and I…” 

A heavy pause, and Noah pulled entirely away. He pawed at his own eyes, trying to fight away his own crying breakdown.

“I shouldn’t have gotten you into this. And this isn’t the first time I told you this, you know? You know this. I realized too late I loved you but I knew we can’t stay together.” 

He knew the break would be messy, too, sooner or later - he had planned on it being sooner, in fact. Rather than later, rather than right now, rather than feeling assured now that Noah was going to abandon his post as best man for Shayne at the altar. 

With all honesty, he could have and would have kept Noah under his wings as a ‘dirty little secret’ as long as potentially possible. He would have made out with him in this very room, he would have met him tomorrow for lunch just to find a secluded place to park his car and break any promise of fidelity not even twenty-four hours after his vows.

For wanting to settle down, he sure still wanted to have the best of both relationships. Not that there wasn’t real love involved… just that the love he was offering both parties was by no means fair. He was ready to give his last plea as he turned to face him again. 

“I think I’ll always love you. I know I will. Most people are hardly lucky enough to ever even feel this… Look, look at me. Noah Grossman, I love you. I know you feel the same. My only proposal now is that you stay, that we figure it out after this. Do you want that?” 

It was unintentional to put Noah in a position where an immediate response would have been ‘I do’, but Noah grasped Shayne’s hands, just briefly.

He knew he didn’t.

“Please, don’t call me. Don’t text me. Don’t come by my house - don’t even e-mail me. Don’t talk to me, don’t even look at me.” 

Shayne took a step back, for the first time feeling a rejected feeling even vaguely on par with what he had done. He had thrown not only Noah’s heart, but his entire identity and being through the wringer. Love was not an excuse enough anymore.

Noah was regretting that he ever allowed himself to believe it was an excuse.

He shouldn’t have, but for the sake of one last time, he grabbed on to Shayne’s lapel and surprised him with a kiss before turning on his heels to tear out of the room. As he left he hid his face, pretending not to hear his name called out or any looks from anyone he passed.

His footsteps felt heavy, and his mind already made excuses up that Shayne could have used for the fact he was leaving. It was second nature to protect someone you loved like that. He thought so, anyway. The halls felt cold and he felt a crushing shame as if he were making a scene, though he was hardly noticed in reality.

When he reached outside, the sun beating down on the earth as it always had, now without the filter of stained glass, he felt dizzy.

He could inhale fresh air, even hear a bird chirping off in some trees. 

He knew that he had no plans, defaulting to the same vulnerable state that made him stay in this situation as long as he had. He’d grown to love the false idea Shayne always had the plan, and had stopped making them himself.

As he heard crunching gravel beneath his feet while he trekked to his car, he wasn’t thinking how in a week he’d let Shayne grovel his way back to Noah’s life. He didn’t think he’d ever make excuses for Shayne again when he left, but he would be back to it in not even a month.

Shayne’s daughter would be born into a nursery painted light blue, and the two men would run out of excuses when they grew too tired to properly attempt hiding. Fourteen months after the wedding with a three month old, it would be hard to tell who felt more ashamed.

For the present moment though, Noah felt more as if he had no aim or purpose than he felt free. It was going to be a cold, empty feeling week until their dysfunction reset. 

No excuse involved.

**Author's Note:**

> you can suggest things, idc. pls do actually i only have some pretty weird ideas


End file.
